I have attached my dissertation as per the above title for general reading, commentary, and as a future reference for anyone studying the area.
It seeks to answer just one question – why do the community and local authority conflict in the conservation of Bloomsbury and Covent Garden? Readers of this blog will know that conflict does indeed occur quite frequently and sometimes very intensely. The question of why this is so recurrent is not really satisfactorily answered elsewhere. Of course there are the usual accusations made by community members – often along the lines of council ‘incompetence’ and ‘greed’, or more moderate views suggest a lack of resource following austerity. The core point of the dissertation is to attempt to answer whether this is really the case, and to ask a further question as to whether or how conflict could potentially be alleviated.
The dissertation, due to word limit, focused on four key themes raised by community participants to the survey I sent out a few months ago: poor conservation, poor participation/consultation, the negative influence of major development, and the negative influence of money/finance/economics. It looks at these four themes in more detail in the context of legislation, policy, town planning theory and practice, economics, politics, and academic research. Ultimately, all lines of enquiry point to the tentative conclusion that Camden’s practice and the resulting conflict in conservation is reflective of far wider trends, but is coloured and influenced by local political agendas, particularly that of affordable housing delivery.
I say tentative because there are many limitations to this research. Camden did not want to participate fully due to various understandable reasons, meaning I was not able to study how things work ‘behind the scenes’ as originally planned. This leaves unanswered the quite significant question of the nature of the interaction between Camden planners, politicians, and major developers. This is mostly ‘behind closed doors’ and whether it could really be studied at all is an interesting question. Certainly these sort of personal and interpersonal factors must be quite influential on conservation, and it is an area which I might seek to research as part of a PhD.
How can conflict be alleviated?
The conclusions of the dissertation generally point to national, rather than local, government as holding the key to improving conservation and consultation outcomes. Despite this, I have identified two potential options for conflict to be alleviated and conservation outcomes to be improved at a local level.
One would see the creation of a community conservation review panel, perhaps functioning similarly to a design review panel, consulted during the private pre-application stage. It may be said that conservation, like design, is confined to the realms of ‘experts’ but that is no longer the position adopted in heritage academia or policy and has not been for some time. There is a strong consensus among heritage academics and international policy-makers that local communities and the values they hold for local heritage are central to proper heritage management. In essence, communities are now recognised as the ‘natural’ experts on local heritage, and traditional ‘professional’ expert interpretations of heritage value are no longer considered robust and are indeed actively challenged. This idea of ‘professional’ heritage understandings and practice is known in academic circles as the ‘authorised heritage discourse’ and is something which international policy now seeks to redress. The means of dismantling this ‘discourse’ resides principally in communities and local understandings and practices of heritage and conservation. Chapter 2 of the dissertation talks about this in more detail and is certainly very worth reading for any community members involved in conservation (not least because all the papers cited are behind hugely expensive paywalls).
More recently, and without necessarily denying the aesthetic and historic values traditionally attributed to heritage, the concept of heritage places that is emerging characterizes heritage as a major anchor for cultural identity and positions it as an important element at the heart of community development.
Araoz (2011) (President of ICOMOS 2014-17)
The second idea is rather more theoretical and politically charged, but suggests that the creation of a ‘heritage offset fund’, mediated via Section 106 agreements, could act to both incentivise developers to minimise heritage harm while also raising local funds for conservation investment. Essentially, this would work by requiring major developers to pay money to the local authority proportionate to any heritage harm which is caused by their development. This sounds somewhat academic but it would (from my reading) be completely legal within the current planning framework. Such planning ‘offset’ funds are already defined and collected by local authorities, for example to offset a lack of affordable housing provision, or to offset poor embodied carbon predictions. This is the main mechanism to incentivise profit-driven developers to provide affordable housing, and is a key route for Camden to achieve its political aims without central government funding. A heritage offset fund could theoretically ‘work’, but whether it could garner political support is quite a different question. The monies available to the council from a particular development are limited and a heritage offset fund could act to reduce affordable housing payments. I assume it would be quite a detailed and technical thing to implement but would almost certainly ‘improve’ conservation outcomes to some degree.
Chapter 04 looks at the key question of participation in conservation decisions. I personally think this is a very important chapter for anyone trying to understand why objections during the formal consultation stage are effectively ‘ignored’. With extensive reference to statute and case law, it explains how the formal consultation stage is effectively set up as a ‘tick-box exercise’. Crucially, it is national, rather than local, government which writes these laws. It suggests that Camden, and indeed any local authority, should be assigning relatively little weight to the public consultation, especially in the context of major development, or they risk appeal or legal challenge from the developer. This leads to something of a paradox where the public consultation, despite being the only ‘formal’ method to influence decision-making, is actually the least effective way to do so. Its legal formality lends it something of an illusion that it ‘should’ be important and ‘listened to’, but in actual fact, this very formality sets it up so that neither the content nor the magnitude of objections are of any more than marginal importance in decision-making.
All these points, among others in the dissertation, ultimately suggest that the current mode of participation in conservation is completely ineffective, and always will be, unless national legislation changes. The core legislation in this area has not changed since 1990 and I doubt it will any time in the next decade, if ever. This is what has led me to look at the question of if this does not work, then how else can communities be involved in planning and conservation? I have suggested two options which could potentially work with political support, but whatever is pursued will rely wholly on the discretion and ‘goodwill’ of the local authority.
This is what I have been looking into recently and continue to look into with regard to Camden’s Central London conservation areas. Currently I am hopeful that something meaningful can be achieved or at least a ‘first step’ in the right direction can be made. Personally, though, I cannot stress how important it is that the community somehow ‘meets Camden halfway’. Any proposal which just places more demands on Camden without offering any benefits is not going to be sustainable. There must be some ‘quid pro quo’ for community participation. One of the key areas where the community can potentially help is in alleviating Camden’s very limited resource. Resource in terms of time and energy is the one thing which the community has in abundance and should be put to good use. I think this energy has to be directed through the right channels and actually deliver something useful for Camden to work out in the long run. It is these ‘channels’ which I am tentatively trying to seek out, and I am sure that with the right support and the ‘goodwill’ of Camden something can be found.
Araoz, G.F. (2011). Preserving heritage places under a new paradigm. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, 1(1), 55-60. https://doi.org/10.1108/20441261111129933
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